Wang Huashao grabbed a piece of duck leg, skin and all, with his bare hands and stuffed it into his mouth. "Delicious," he mumbled indistinctly, then began to wolf it down.
A bite of meat, a big mouthful of rice.
Miao Shian was the most refined eater.
He chewed slowly and deliberately, occasionally dabbing the grease from the corner of his mouth with a tissue he carried.
Lin Yi was focused when she ate. Without a word, she picked up a piece of crispy skin with a layer of fat, popping it directly into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out as her eyes were already fixed on the next piece.
Only Zhou Kai’s movements seemed a bit sluggish.
He picked up a piece of roasted duck with his chopsticks and dipped it into the red, sweet sauce.
He chewed with great force, his brow slightly furrowed.
His eyes were unfocused. He was clearly still stuck on the unresolved differential element derivation from the last class. Lin Yi’s intuition and the sight of Chen Zhuo’s densely-packed scratch paper, filled with brute-force deconstruction, weighed on his mind like two mountains.
He chewed a mouthful of rice for a long time, and even swallowing seemed to require effort.
Chen Zhuo sat diagonally across from Zhou Kai.
He ate quickly but methodically, spitting the bones onto the edge of his tray in a neat row.
He glanced up at Zhou Kai.
His gaze lingered on the tense face for half a second.
Chen Zhuo didn’t put down his chopsticks.
He reached out with his chopsticks, rummaged around in the bag for a moment, and picked out the meatiest piece of duck leg, dripping with sauce.
With a flick of his wrist.
The piece of duck landed steadily in the stainless steel tray in front of Zhou Kai, splattering a few tiny drops of sauce.
Zhou Kai froze, startled out of his spiral of self-doubt.
He looked up at Chen Zhuo.
Chen Zhuo wasn’t looking at him. His head was down as he shoveled a mouthful of white rice into his mouth.
"Eat up."
Chen Zhuo put a piece of duck rib into his own mouth.
"Calculus and figuring out differential elements burns a lot of glucose. There’s no lecture tonight, so they’ve definitely got something else planned for us."
Zhou Kai looked at the rich piece of duck in his tray, then at Chen Zhuo’s calm profile.
He had thought that after crushing him with such impeccable logic in class, Chen Zhuo would carry himself with the air of a victor, at least a little.
But Chen Zhuo didn’t.
There was no consolation, no lecturing, and no false pleasantries.
Zhou Kai took a deep breath, and the tension in his shoulders slowly eased.
"Thanks."
Zhou Kai picked up his chopsticks, grabbed the piece of duck, and took a huge bite.
Sitting beside them, Lin Yi glanced at the two but said nothing. She just silently quickened her pace of eating.
Two whole ducks.
In less than twenty minutes, they were reduced to a pile of clean bones.
The rice in the six trays was also gone.
6:30 PM.
The cafeteria was almost empty.
They silently cleared their trays, tossed them into the collection bins, and gathered their belongings.
They walked out of the cafeteria.
The sky had already darkened.
The streetlights came on, casting a dim yellow glow on the plane trees.
Reeking of roasted duck and still weighed down by a fatigue that hadn’t completely faded, they followed the familiar path back to the administration building.
Lin Yi dragged her feet, walking at the very back.
She muttered under her breath as she walked.
"Making people use their brains right after they’ve eaten their fill... it’s inhumane..."
They climbed up to the third floor.
Pushing open the door to the lecture hall, they saw that all the stark white fluorescent lights were already on.
Professor Wang wasn’t on the lecture stage. In his place stood a young man.
He stood there, expressionless, in a clean white shirt.
On the lectern in front of him.
Sat three thick stacks of stapled test packets, smelling of freshly printed paper.
The six of them each walked to the seats they had occupied that morning and sat down.
"One for each of you."
He picked up the packets and handed them to Zhou Kai and Lin Yi in the front row.
"Pass them back."
The papers were passed from hand to hand.
Chen Zhuo received his packet.
It was thick.
Full-sized pages, a total of eight, were densely packed with charts, complex force-analysis diagrams, and long blocks of descriptive text.
Printed at the top in bold was a single line of text: *A Compilation of Final Problems from Past National Junior High Physics Competition Finals*.
"Tonight, for evening study, there will be no lecture."
The TA looked down at the middle schoolers.
His voice, under the stark white lights, was devoid of any emotion.
"Your task is these three test packets."
"No talking, no looking at your books. I will collect the papers at 10:30 on the dot."
"We’ll go over them tomorrow."
With that, he pulled out the chair in front of the lectern, sat down, took out a college physics textbook, and paid them no further attention.
In the lecture hall.
The Jinling Roasted Duck they had just eaten seemed to instantly turn into a heavy stone in their stomachs.
As their digestive systems drew blood away from their brains, waves of drowsiness began to wash over them. The day had been a double torment of black-box experiments and theory. The night was a sea of no-frills final problems from the national competition.
Wang Huashao slapped his cheeks hard and sighed in despair as he stared at the eight pages in front of him.
Zhou Kai reached up to rub his throbbing temples. He picked up his pen but hesitated to put it to paper.
Lin Yi still had her chin propped in one hand.
She stared at the first problem on the test—a complex multi-body motion problem involving a pulley system. She didn’t sigh or complain, but her gaze was a little unfocused, as if she were adjusting her mindset.
Chen Zhuo sat in the second row.
He didn’t rub his temples, nor did he sigh.
He picked up the thick test packet, turned to the first page, and quickly scanned the questions.
The first page: three comprehensive thermodynamics problems testing specific heat capacity and energy loss.
The second page: two electromagnetic coupling problems that touched on the conceptual boundaries of calculus.
The third page: a complex pulley system with friction under non-ideal conditions.
Chen Zhuo flipped through the pages quickly.
FLIP.
FLIP.
In less than ten seconds, he had scanned all eight pages.
’Not bad.’
He put the packet down and glanced at the clock on the wall.
There were still two hundred and forty minutes until 10:30.
Chen Zhuo took out a pen.
He uncapped it, the sound sharp and almost piercing in the quiet classroom.
Then, without any hesitation, the nib of his pen touched down on a blank space on the first page.
A string of fluid force-analysis equations flowed onto the paper. The scratching of his pen against the sheet had a certain unstoppable rhythm.
In this lecture hall filled with exhaustion and despair, that sound was like a starting gun.
Or like a silent, heavy machine whose start button had suddenly been pressed, its gears beginning to roar and interlock.
Sitting in front, Zhou Kai flinched. He heard the sound of ceaseless calculation coming from behind him.
That terrifying sense of pressure washed over him again.
He gritted his teeth, instantly shaking off all his fatigue. He uncapped his fountain pen and forced his attention onto the test packet.
Wang Huashao also sat up straight, no longer daring to rub his face, and quickly grabbed a piece of scratch paper.
Lin Yi released her chin from her hand.
Hearing the steady, rapid scratching from behind her, she raised an eyebrow slightly.
Then, she picked up her pen as well.
Under the stark white fluorescent lights.
Accompanied by the occasional chirp of insects from outside the window.
The rhythm of the entire room was completely taken over by the sound of that single gel pen.

Comments

Loading...